WASHINGTON — Several months after a WTOP Ticketbuster investigation into erroneous parking tickets getting mailed to innocent people, the District’s top parking enforcement agency is making changes.
The issue begins when a ticket writer inputs the wrong license plate on the ticket. Whoever received that ticket decides to ignore it, rather than pay up. One month later, whoever owns the incorrect license plate will receive a notice in the mail demanding payment on the fine. The innocent driver can contest the ticket, but must prove the car in the ticket doesn’t belong to them with a DMV registration.
However, this problem could soon be eliminated. According to the WTOP investigation, the issue affected thousands of Maryland and Virginia motorists, many of whom never travel into Washington, D.C.
The D.C. Department of Public Works (DPW), which writes a vast majority of the parking tickets in the city, will soon update its software to require officers to enter the license plate twice before printing a ticket.
“A lot of times what you’re seeing is that people are transposing the numbers. Therefore, the ticket is going to the wrong person,” says DPW Director William O. Howland.
“Now the parking officer will have to input the tag number twice, such as when you change your password. You’ve got to put it in twice to be sure you entered it in correctly,” he adds.
If the two fields on the handheld machine match, then the ticket will be printed. If the two fields on the ticket don’t match, then the officer will be alerted to a discrepancy on the license plate.
DPW is talking with their contractor and the upgrade should be complete in the next 30 to 60 days.
“We want our tickets to be right. This will make sure our officers are being careful about entering the tags correctly when they issue the ticket,” says Howland.
This upgrade also comes as DPW supervisors are insisting that officers take photographs with the tickets.
While Howland disagrees with an Inspector General’s recommendation that the pictures should be required for a ticket to be valid, he says that officers are expected to take pictures of the license plate. He adds that officers who do not take pictures will have to discuss it during their annual performance evaluations with supervisors.
Drivers can check whether their parking ticket has pictures through a program called DPW TicPix. If the parking ticket lists “Department 15,” then DPW wrote the ticket.
Metropolitan Police (MPD) and the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) also write parking tickets, but neither agency uses TicPix, nor has plans to require ticketing officers to enter the license plate twice before printing a ticket. MPD and DDOT also do not routinely take pictures of license plates, although Chief Lanier has told WTOP Ticketbuster that she will require it.
Lanier tells WTOP that even with moving violations, taking pictures of the license plate is a common sense measure to ensure accuracy.
DDOT has declined to make interim director Matthew Brown or key parking enforcement staffers available for interview.
However, along with the Traffic Adjudication Amendment Act, passed earlier this year, there could be considerable progress on the issue in the next year.
Beginning Oct. 1, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will be required to pull the name, address, make and model of all vehicles when a ticket goes unpaid for 30 days. If the make and model on the Maryland or Virginia registration does not match the make and model listed on the ticket, then the DMV must dismiss the ticket automatically. Currently, the D.C. DMV only requests a name and address for out-of-state vehicles with outstanding tickets.
Council Member Mary Cheh introduced the fix after the WTOP investigation, arguing that it was unfair that innocent motorists were being hassled to pay fines for vehicles they clearly didn’t own.
She and Tommy Wells will hold a hearing next Wednesday morning with MPD, DDOT and DPW about speed cameras and parking enforcement tickets in the city, focusing on the OIG report released earlier this month.
If you think you’re the victim of a bogus speed camera, red-light camera or parking ticket in D.C., Maryland or Virginia, WTOP may be able to help you cut the red tape. Email us the details of your case — along with documentation — to ticketbuster@wtop.com.
Follow @WTOP and @WTOPTraffic on Twitter and WTOP on Facebook.
